1000mcg Oral Vitamin B12 do not Bring Low Plasma Levels Back to Normal
You probably take a multivitamin , do you? Well, you eat healthy, as well? But does this mean you get enough of all nutrients? Maybe... maybe not. In a recent study ( Baer. 2011 ) on vitamin B12 deficiency and supplementation in healthy young women, of the 300 participants, 137, i.e. 46%, had low-normal plasma levels of vitamin B12 . Interestingly, in participants with very low B12 levels, neither supplementation with 1000mcg of oral methylcobalamin , nor the consumption of a cereal meal (probably a bad idea, anyway) 4x/week for three months was able to restore B12 to an acceptable level: Supplementation of either vitamin B12 pill or 100% RDA fortified cereal for 3 consecutive months resulted in significant (p < 0.05) increase in mean plasma vitamin B12 levels in all subjects ( Table 4 ). Subjects whose baseline plasma vitamin B12 status was < 200 pg/ml were not observed to increase plasma vitamin B12 levels to at or above the 250 pg/ml benchmark following three months su...